The tourism-led economic growth hypothesis is one of the most investigated concepts in tourism economics literature. It has been verified by many empirical studies so far. Since the concept of growth-driven inflation belongs to the fundamentals of macroeconomic theory, one could reasonably assumeinflation can also be led by tourism development. The question, however, is through what mechanisms could it be adequately identified and assessed. If anywhere, tourism-led inflation could first and foremost be perceived in a country with a significant economic impact of tourism. We take one of such countries as a case study and use the structural vector autoregression methodology to examine tourism-led inflation. The presented empirical framework may also serve as a role model applicable to other countries and regions.

The tourism-led economic growth hypothesis is one of the most investigated concepts in tourism economics literature. It has been verified by many empirical studies so far. Since the concept of growth-driven inflation belongs to the fundamentals of macroeconomic theory, one could reasonably assume inflation can also be led by tourism development. The question, however, is through what mechanisms could it be adequately identified and assessed. If anywhere, tourism-led inflation could first and foremost be perceived in a country with a significant economic impact of tourism. We take one of such countries as a case study and use the structural vector autoregression methodology to examine tourism-led inflation. The presented empirical framework may also serve as a role model applicable to other countries and regions.

Intensive tourism development in Croatia neither improved nor reduced overall life satisfaction; however, there was a modest but statistically significant negative effect on happiness. The residents were not entirely capable of managing emotional distress, with social psychological factors the main source of negative affections. While crowding stress negatively affected perceived quality of life, it was not an important predictor of support for tourism. Residents' support was not associated with the regional differences in perceived net benefits from tourism. The findings underline the importance of monitoring residents' psychological well-being, adaptation mechanisms, and the historical and social context in which preferences are formed. The risk of overtourism in Croatian destinations may be masked by the status quo bias and maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Abstract For a long time, tourism has been considered a social, economic and environmental phenomenon that provides products and services whose consumption is supposed to surge in periods of economic growth and wane in periods of slowdown, thereby acting procyclical. To examine this hypothesis, we have explored the exact behavior of tourism activity before and after the last big economic crisis – the Great Recession 2008 followed by the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. We have applied a methodology of business cycle analysis to investigate the relationship between the cyclical components of GDP and tourism nights spent by the residents of 23 EU member states in the 1996-2018 period. We report an important structural change in the relationship between tourism and business cycles. The relationship became apparently weaker over time and finally became insignificant after the end of the crisis, suggesting a smooth structural change. Our findings suggest uncertainty as to how tourism activity would restore its usual dynamics following the end of the current COVID-19 pandemic recession.

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the important concepts and challenges emerging from an assessment of the employment generated by tourism activity. Methodology: Standard methodology for the compilation of the tourism satellite account is used. The case study is Croatia, a small European country whose economy is immensely driven by tourism, thereby representing a particularly suitable research example. Results: The paper reports and discusses all practical issues related to the process of assessment and measurement of tourism-generated employment in a small tourism-driven economy. Conclusion: The assessment of tourism-generated employment is far from being analyzed and documented as thoroughly as the assessment of tourism-generated GDP. A common impression is that researchers have hitherto been too busy measuring tourism-generated GDP, thereby paying insuffi cient attention to the most important manifestation of GDP creation - employment. Therefore, this paper aims to fill, at least partially, this huge gap in the current literature.

Being the most interesting component of total employment, directly related to the business cycle, cyclical employment is a frequent topic of macroeconomic analysis. It is generally acknowledged and empirically proven that cyclical employment related to many economic activities, such as trade or construction, is highly synchronized with the fluctuation of GDP. The aim of this paper is to explore whether the same conclusion is valid in the case of tourism. Our results show that cyclical employment related to tourism activity acts slightly different and has a potential to stabilize the overall cyclical employment during the different phases of business cycle. It contributes to a better understanding of the role of tourism activity on labor market.

The aim of this in vitro study was to assess the effect of two different adhesive application methods on shear dentin bond strength (ISO 29022) using three various adhesive systems. A mid-coronal section of 77 intact third human molars with fully developed apices was made to create flat bonding substrates. The materials used in the study were Excite F (Ivoclar Vivadent), Prime&Bond Universal (Dentsply Sirona) and G-Premio Bond (GC). The application of each adhesion system was performed in two different ways. In the first group, the bonding agent was light cured immediately after the application (conventional method), while in the second group the adhesive and composite were cured concurrently (“co-curing” method). A total of 180 specimens were prepared (3 adhesives × 2 method of application × 30 specimens per experimental group), stored at 37 °C in distilled water and fractured in shear mode after 1 week. Statistical analysis was performed using ANOVA and Weibull statistics. The highest bond strength was obtained for Prime&Bond conventional (21.7 MPa), whilst the lowest bond strength was observed when co-curing was used (particularly, Excite F 12.2 MPa). The results showed a significant difference between conventional and co-curing methods in all materials. According to reliability analysis, the co-curing method diminished bond reliability. Different application techniques exhibit different bond strengths to dentin.

Formulated almost two decades ago, tourism-led growth hypothesis is still a subject of rigorous scientific scrutiny. Although there is no doubt that methodological issues have seriously undermined the efforts to draw definite conclusions, open questions could also be a result of ignoring a broader context in which tourism and growth interact. It still remains unclear how some important contextual variables, such as social and political factors, affect the verification of tourism-led growth hypothesis. In this regard, this paper is an attempt of both, a demonstration of an advanced econometric technique applied to investigate the true nature of relationship between tourism and economic growth as well as an exploration of the influence of some, possibly very important, contextual variables on tourism-growth nexus. Specifically, the initial level of poverty and the level of political freedom are hypothesized to have a significant impact on the verification of tourism-led growth hypothesis. This is tested by utilizing a dynamic panel data model with the System GMM estimator, as recommended in recent literature.

Willingness-to-pay (WTP) studies frequently use a contingent valuation (CV) method to determine the economic value of a good or service. However, a typical CV study is able to estimate the WTP for a good as a whole, but provides no information about the marginal WTP for different attributes of a good. The aim was to estimate marginal WTP for different attributes of a CV scenario. By using the data from an additional best–worst choice (BWC) experiment, we disaggregated the holistic WTP values for dental care, estimated using the CV method, into attribute-specific WTP values. The study was conducted at the School of Dental Medicine, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Dental school patients were surveyed from March 2016 to January 2017, and their WTP for dental care was estimated using either a CV survey (n = 242), which also included a BWC task, or a discrete choice experiment (DCE) survey (n = 275). The largest marginal welfare estimate (€13.5) was obtained for the improvement in treatment explanation, followed by the improvements in staff behavior (€8.1) and waiting time in the office (€7.2), and by the changes in dental care provider (€3.4). These estimates were generally highly similar to the traditional marginal WTP estimates obtained with a traditional multi-profile DCE, after adjusting DCE estimates for non-attendance to the cost attribute. Our BWC-CV framework may serve as a valuable alternative for estimating marginal WTP values for health care attributes when the choice behavior of respondents raises concerns for the validity of DCE estimates.

Interdependence of tourism demand is an underexplored topic in tourism economics literature. Besides the traditional procedure of cross elasticities calculation, shock analysis could be used to investigate the interconnections of tourism flows. This paper conducts an econometric analysis of international tourism demand for 10 most developed Mediterranean destinations: Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, and Turkey. In particular, a vector autoregression model is estimated for each pair of 10 countries. Impulse response functions are applied to investigate how a shock in tourism demand for one country impacts the tourism demand for its substitutes and complements.

RATIONALE, AIMS, AND OBJECTIVES:The literature suggests that discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are a preferable method for estimating willingness-to-pay (WTP) values, as they may avoid some biases often observed in contingent valuation surveys, such as protest and strategic behaviour. However, the choice studies have demonstrated that attribute non-attendance may be a serious issue that leads to biased WTP estimates.METHOD:A DCE was used to estimate patients' WTP for dental care at the dental school clinic. The endogenous attribute attendance (EAA) model was used to estimate WTP for dental care attributes, while accounting for non-attendance to the cost attribute.RESULTS:The EAA model revealed that almost every second respondent had ignored the cost attribute when making choices, indicating that patients were very sensitive to other characteristics of dental care. Dental care providers should pay particular attention to providing a detailed explanation of treatment to their patients, as this was the most valued attribute of dental care. The welfare estimates from the EAA model, which accounted for non-attendance to the cost attribute, were more than two times lower than welfare estimates from a traditional multinomial logit model and mixed logit model estimated in WTP space.CONCLUSIONS:The findings raise concerns for derived WTP estimates in DCE studies that did not consider non-attendance to the cost attribute during the estimation process. Non-attendance to the cost attribute overestimates WTP values, even if being motivated by the true preferences of respondents.

Outdoor recreation in natural areas generally contributes to physiological and psychological restoration, but the increasing popularity of urban green spaces raises concerns for the benefits they provide. To assess trail users' preferences for recreational conditions in a peri-urban nature park, a stated preference approach in the form of the discrete choice experiment was applied, and accompanied with a best-worst scaling experiment that assessed the perception of crowding, i.e. the relative impact of recreational setting attributes on the sense of crowding. The two experiments were linked to investigate the influence of crowding perceptions on the sensitivity to crowding. Trail users' perception of 'trail use level', 'hut occupancy' and 'noise from road traffic' significantly influenced their sensitivity to 'crowding on the trail' and 'intensity of road traffic'. Trail use and traffic noise were identified as sensitive recreational conditions, and should be given a priority when managing recreational use pressure in the park and maintaining or improving its recreational value.

This paper investigated the effects of including an opt-out option and the cost attribute on the elicited preference structure and response error variance in a discrete choice experiment (DCE) valuing the preferences for the delivery of dental care. The mixed logit framework was used for testing the effects of survey design features on respondents' preferences and scale. The standard practice of testing these effects was further expanded by using the structural choice modelling (SCM) framework. Recent studies have suggested that not offering respondents an opt-out option may distort the utility estimates. However, the influence of the opt-out option, framed as a ‘substitute care provider’ alternative, on the preferences for dental care and response error variance was not significant. When the cost attribute was added to the choice sets, the rank order of the attributes remained the same, and overall preferences did not differ significantly. This indicates that respondents did not change their decision rule. However, they were not very consistent in their preferences for all attributes. Including an extra cost attribute significantly increased the response error variance. The findings indicate that the cost attribute could be safely used, at least in similar contexts, without concerns for disturbing the preferences for other attributes. We did not find strong evidence that the effect of including an extra cost attribute is any different from the expected effect of including any other choice attribute; therefore, its influence may not be as relevant as some of the previous studies may have suggested.

Public goods, specifically the environmental amenities and natural resources, are often a primary factor in attracting tourism demand. As tourism activity is gaining its importance in transition economies of Western Balkan countries, estimating the value of natural resources could increase the need for their protection and sustainable management. While there is a plenty of application of valuation techniques in Western European countries, the application of such methods is scarce in Western Balkan countries. The coastal area of Croatia is particularly affected by intense tourism pressure, raising concerns for the population of vulnerable marine species. A Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) was applied to estimate the value of environmental amenities associated with the preservation of a bottlenose dolphin population that lives in the Cres-Losinj archipelago. The nautical tourists having berth/moored in two marinas in the archipelago were surveyed in 2016. An environmental tax per mooring/berth day was used as a payment vehicle for eliciting the willingness to pay (WTP). A Tobit regression model was estimated to identify the main predictors of WTP. The nautical tourists were on average willing to pay 1.8 Euro per day in order to better preserve the dolphin population. Loyal nautical guests, i.e. those with more previous visits to the Cres-Losinj archipelago, those who would like to learn about dolphins, those with a mooring/berth at the island of Losinj, as well as female guests were willing to pay significantly higher day tax for the dolphin preservation. Nautical tourists staying longer in the area as well as domestic ones were willing to pay less. Our findings suggest that developing differential payment scheme for the marine environment, and increasing environmental awareness of nautical tourists through better communication, education and integration with the local culture and an authentic local experience would contribute to sustainable marine management in the area.

This paper evaluates the perception of crowding, its determinants and relationship with trail users' experience in a peri-urban nature park. Existing crowding surveys rely heavily on a single-item 9-point crowding scale which was originally developed for backcountry areas. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to test the validity and reliability of this measure in detecting crowding issues and formulating visitor capacity limits. Low validity and reliability raised concerns about the applicability of this scale in similar frontcountry areas. Inability of this simple crowding measure to detect a visitor threshold brings to the fore its another important limitation - ignorance of the complexity of crowding phenomenon. The perception of crowding varies with various social, psychological and situational factors, and a best-worst scaling (BWS) experiment was designed to simultaneously evaluate different aspects of crowding in the Medvednica Nature Park, a peri-urban nature park near Zagreb, Croatia. The findings of BWS experiment revealed that occupancy of mountain huts, number of other hikers on the trail and amount of litter along the trail on average contributed most to the trail users' sense of crowding. A latent class analysis identified a large heterogeneity in the perception of crowding; while one group of trail users (63%) was more disturbed by the direct social impacts, the others (37%) were more disturbed by the secondary impacts of other visitors, especially by the negative externalities from road traffic in the park. Older visitors had a greater tendency to primarily associate crowding with the environmental conditions. A higher impact of trail use level in the perception of crowding, younger age and more frequent use were associated with a more negative evaluation of crowding. The park management should closely monitor road traffic in the park and visitor activity on highly used trails, especially on those popular among younger trail users.

Objectives To examine the amount of heterogeneity in patients’ preferences for dental care, what factors affect their preferences, and how much they would be willing to pay for improvement in specific dental care attributes. Methods A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was used to elicit patients’ preferences. Three alternative dental care services that differed in the type of care provider, treatment explanation, dental staff behavior, waiting time and treatment cost were described to patients. Patients (n=265) were asked to choose their preferred alternative. The study was conducted at a public dental clinic of the School of Dental Medicine, University of Zagreb. Mixed logit and latent class models were used for analysis. Results On average, the patients would be willing to pay €45 for getting a detailed explanation of treatment over no explanation. This was the most valued attribute of dental care, followed by dental staff behavior with marginal willingness-to-pay (WTP) of €28. Dental care provided by the faculty members and private dental care were valued similarly, while student-provided care was valued €23 less. Patients also disliked longer waiting time in the office, but this was the least important attribute. Four classes of patients with distinct preferences for dental care were identified. Older and/or more educated patients tended to give relatively less importance to treatment explanation. Higher education was also associated with a higher propensity to substitute faculty dental care with the private care providers. Conclusions Large heterogeneity in patients’ preferences was detected. Understanding their preferences may improve the delivery of dental care. Clinical significance Dental care providers should pay particular attention to providing a detailed treatment explanation to their patients. Dental care for older and/or more educated patients should be more attentive to interpersonal characteristics. Faculty dental care provided by faculty members could be price competitive to private care, and student-provided care more affordable.

Consumption generated by the 'Advent' is a result of an appropriate offer at the ‘Advent’ event, i.e. spending that would not occur if there is no 'Advent'. Consumption generated by the 'Advent' is a sum of (1) consumption of all visitors at the ‘Advent’ sites and (2) consumption outside 'Advent' locations (accommodation, shops, restaurants and bars outside 'Advent' location, culture, local transport etc.) for those visitors whose arrival in Zagreb was motivated by visiting the 'Advent'. In order to estimate the total consumption generated by the 'Advent' two primary research (surveys) were conducted and several relevant and reliable secondary sources of information were used. Total consumption generated by the 'Advent' in Zagreb is estimated from 390 to 438 million Kuna (52 to 58 million Euro). The results indicate the importance of the 'Advent' for Zagreb tourism and city economy overall, primarily through realized consumption of visitors. It also provides base for calculation of the overall effects of 'Advent' on the economy of the city, including an indirect positive effects on the image of the city and new and / or repeated arrivals. Furthermore, the results provide a tool for improving the overall ‘Advent’ offer and increasing the visitors’ spending.

This paper examined the recreational trail preferences of visitors in the Medvednica Nature Park, a protected forest area on the outskirts of the City of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted to get the insight into relative importance of different resource, social and managerial conditions in the park. Accounting for multiple site conditions requires a relatively large number of choice attributes, which may impose too high cognitive burden on respondents. On the other hand, ignoring relevant attributes may lead to the omitted variable bias. A split sample approach was used to find the balance between the possibility of omitted variable bias and cognitive burden; one version of the questionnaire used DCE with the lower number of attributes, of which some were multidimensional, while the other version used DCE with the greater number of more specific attributes. By using partial profile design in the latter experiment, the number of attributes in the choice task was identical in both experiments. Perceived difficulty of the choice task, self-reported choice certainty and choice consistency were similar across the two experiments. Heterogeneity in preferences and scale was detected in both experiments. Indications of non-compensatory behavior, and greater error variance among less experienced trail users were found in the partial profile experiment with more specific trail attributes, but not in the experiment with multidimensional attributes. Based on the research results, important managerial implications were derived. Non-visual sensory experiences of nature, namely fresh air and soundscape, were generally more important to trail users than visual experiences. Crowding was detected as an important characteristic of trail experience; however, trail users were willing to tolerate relatively high levels of crowding.

To investigate the effects of bleaching agent on microhardness, color and light transmission of different restorative materials. Specimens (n=20) of Tetric EvoCeram (TEC), Tetric EvoCeram Bulk Fill (TECBF) and Equia Fill (EQUIA) were treated with either 40% hydrogen peroxide Opalesence Boost or destilled water for 45 min. Specimens were stained in tea solution or stored in deionized water for one and two weeks. Color, microhardness and light transmission were monitored at the baseline, after the bleaching and after the tea immersion or storage in deionized water. After the bleaching a significant reduction in surface microhardness (p<0.001) was recorded for all materials. Clinically visible color change (ΔE>3) was observed after the bleaching and after treatment in tea solution, but only in EQUIA samples. The absorption coefficient was the largest for the samples stained in tea solution. Bleaching can affect the microhardness and color of fillings; therefore, they should be sometimes replaced.